remote DSB?

ok im back from vacation and I should have said RFSB or DSB.
it is my understanding that a DSB is pointless unless you have a plennum. (because of system crashes)with my 75g I have the under gravel part of a under gravel filter this lets me clean under the sand every 5-6 months the only water changes I do if that.
the tank is allmost a compleet ecosystem and it has no sump! just a fluval 404 filled with rock rubble and an old wisper 5 hob filter and 2 power heads to move water threw the 175 pounds of live rock there is about 150 pounds of mix substrate and a cheep lee's air driven skimmer that some how produces only phyto that I feed to my sps tank.I no longer feed my 75g with 9 fish I had 10 but found my 8"sohal tang a new home in a 240g he was 1 1/2" when I got him 4 years ago, I only feed the anenome's(all 4 of them) frozen fresh shrimp,I have 3 large sand sifting stars and probably 10 sand sifting cucumbers all very happy.(my 75 has bin running about 5 years) now having said that when people say it cant and won't work I tend to disreguard any statement they make.
I am in the process of moving the tank into my new 125g and dont want to lose the room with a DSB. I am planning on a few diferent substrates in 2-6g buckets(crushed,coraldolamite,argonite,) with screens and a 1" gap seperating the substrates and the last layer with a mix of all the substrates. the water will flow out of the main tank 1/2 into a 20g long low light tank with mushrooms and a few other low light corals then into the bucket with the other 1/2 of the water then into the sump with LR and a small amount of argonite (so the pods can breed) then the skimmer then bucket of bio- balls then into 33g sps tank and finaly back into the 125g tank.
I know BIO-BALLS ( it will be OK!) they wont create a trap being the last part of the filter insted of the first just a place for pods to hang out with good bacteria.
and now my problem do I run a remote DSB, or reverse flow sand bed ?
 
you asked that question already.

it seems your kind of set in your ways and missinformed ,,[a dsb does not need a plennum] your set up is so different from the normal known to work kind of aquarium that your the only one who can answer your own question.
 
Sorry, yep I said N2 but ment sulfer. Many reefer have had a old sand bed get disturbed and lost corals and fish because of it. It probably takes a lot of disturbence to be a problem, such as a powerhead coming loose and getting directed right at the sand.

Do a search and you can probably find threads about it. I'm too cheap to pay for a membership, so I can't search.

Nitrogen is not harmless. Corals will not survive in tanks with high Nitrates. They do not harm fish as far as I can remember though. The whole purpose for a deep sand bed is to eliminate nitrates and nitrites.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7871713#post7871713 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by daytonians
Sorry, yep I said N2 but ment sulfer. Many reefer have had a old sand bed get disturbed and lost corals and fish because of it. It probably takes a lot of disturbence to be a problem, such as a powerhead coming loose and getting directed right at the sand.

Do a search and you can probably find threads about it. I'm too cheap to pay for a membership, so I can't search.

Nitrogen is not harmless. Corals will not survive in tanks with high Nitrates. They do not harm fish as far as I can remember though. The whole purpose for a deep sand bed is to eliminate nitrates and nitrites.

and turn them into nitrogen, which is completely harmless :D
 
first off I never said a DSB with out a plenum wouldnt work I said it is pointless. that is if you plan on having your aquarium more than a few years because of the build up of hydrogen sulfide in the sand bed witch will result in a systen crash. (been there done that ) here is some reading for the missinformed and anyone who wishes to learn about a DSB and a plenum if some one knows a site like this for a reverse flow system please let me know http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/sept2002/feature.htm
 
yeame... this has been hashed out dozens of times. Suffice to say that there are dozens of long term DSB setups without plenums that have not crashed and do not have hydrogen sulfide problems. I hardly think that you are an authority on DSBs, and one online source does not prove a point. I recently helped take down a long established 500 gallon system that had a DSB (owner purchased a new home and had to move). There was certainly no obvious oder of trapped hydrogen sulfide relased when we tore the system down and scooped out the sand. I was amazed at how little smell there actually was.

What was the question here? Did you have a question about remote DSBs or are you trying to start a DSB crash thread?
 
first you need to read the article you wish us too. before you come in here with a statement like [a DSB is pointless unless you have a plennum] you had better do some homework. i have.

the jaubert method has nothing to do with a DSB at all. its set up to be a live sand and very coarse at that,,, most would call it a gravel bed. not only that its very tempermental at best and failure is almost certain unless you follow jaubert,s methods to the T. jauberts methods have been around for 20 years [he worked on this allot before his french patent in the late 80,s]

we are beyond his methods as there are far better ways to deal with a closed loop in a lightly stocked tank.


[Professor Jean Jaubert of Nice University first perfected the living sand method of enhanced biological filtration, a process that received a French patent in the late 80's followed by a US patent in 1991. ]

yes his tanks have seen great growth and they have been up and running for a long time but at what cost

[The physical and chemical parameters of each tank and its technical equipment is monitored 24-hours-a-day by a computerised management system.]

[ The high esteem in which the Monaco Aquarium is held rests firmly on these exhibits, which thrive thanks to Jaubert's Microcean process and the expertise of the technicians and biologists of the aquarium.]

i said it before and i will say it again, this type of system is like tuning a carburator and 1 small error and you will crash hard.

in final. his old method is great in a labratory but for the home aquarium/sump/fuge it is not practical with so many tried and true methods of nitrate reduction avalible
 
looks like you are thinking to hard are you talking about the jaubert system or the monaco system or mixing the two there is three different systems in the artical I posted the link to having said that get over the whole DSB debate I dont realy care I want to know about a remote dsb and a reverse sand bed neither of which are in the main tank and neither are lighted and I cant find much on the reverse sand bed if any one knows anything about the reverse sand bed let me know and OUTY you need to read the article again
 
yeame, I think your qeustion has been answered. Fill a 5 gallon pail with sand and run water over the top of it, brisk enough to keep detritus from settling, but not brisk enough to erode the sand.

The lack of light will keep algea from growing and the DEEP sand will have a very long life. It is a very simple system and easy to take offline or replace if there are problems. The unit does not need a host of fauna and sifters like a local bed, as there is no light and nothing fouling it. There is no tweaking and no twiddling. The unit is not affected by power outages or other mistakes.

The "upside down" bed can be looked at many different ways. There is a lot of tweaking of flow and other parameters and frankly it may or may not work as expected depending on any number of ever changing variables. Why bother with all of the trouble when such a simple solution is available?
 
my friend the only person to do a reverse live sandbed successfully for a long period of time is jaubert, everyone else gave it up already because of failure...

the jaubert method and the monaco are one in the same.

[ Since Jaubert's work is featured there, his system has come to be called the "Monaco System"]

[Jaubert's Method, the "Monaco System," Defined and Refined] the title of the article.

there is not 3 different systems there is only 1, obviously you do care about the dsb debate because you wont let go of a failed idea that 1 proffesor in a lab got to work.
 
As far as I know it isn't so much of a "failed idea" as it is pointless to use a plenum because the denitrifying abilities of both a plenum system and a DSB are pretty much the same. IMO the reason most people failed with a plenum is because they placed liverock on top of the crushed coral. Thoughs areas didn't recieve enough flow and collected detritus faster. With the sugar fine sand used in a DSB it is more difficult for detritus to sink into the sand.
 
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